Saturday, July 31, 2010

Hey, I'm being mildly unfair! I dunno that she was a stripper, just that she met the president here and became economics minister a few months later. Maybe you could chalk it up to the closeness that results from tragedy. It's a pity there was no Libyan team I guess.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

I thought the NYT already had a 5,000-character limit on comments, as well as comment moderators who remove abusive and profane comments. Krugman’s policy seems geared to limit comments to “Yay Dr. K!” “Way to go!” “Keynes was right!” etc. But, whatever. It’s his comments section.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Hey, Sarah Palin's clubbing The Media with Trig! The referenced discussions regarding Trig's parentage don't have a lot of there there and most of the people I spot that I think of as decent people behave decently, but guess what? A whole bunch of people have their names - their actual names! - attached to various Trig conspiracy theories advanced by a very few people. Everyone taking part in such a discussion should be embarrassed about it in any case.

Was Journolist a stupid fucking idea or what?

Incidentally: I really dislike LEAVE TRIG ALONE jokes because that kid didn't choose a life in the media, and of course personal experience makes me a little sensitive to picking on kids with problems but a post like this is kind of a bind isn't it?

The next time you start some dumb fucking list ENFORCE ANONYMITY BY ANONYMIZING PARTICIPANTS.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Thursday, July 22, 2010

U.S. Customs and Border Protection guards seized five computers donated by Vancouver residents that were bound for Cuba Wednesday as part of the 21st Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba.

[...]

Solanki, one of five Vancouver residents on the 85-person humanitarian aid caravan to break the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, said the reasoning behind the seizure was the U.S. authorities wanted to investigate whether the computers could be used for military purposes.

“These computers are Pentium 4s that are five-year-old used computers, so it’s a bit of a ridiculous charge,” said Solanki. “So they took five of them to inspect them to see if they could be used for military purposes by Cuba. That doesn’t even make sense, because they confiscated five of them and left another 55 computers with us.”

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

AWR Hawkins is a military historian who holds a Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. His articles on battlefields and men of war have appeared in Vietnam Magazine, the Civil War Times, the CAF Dispatch, and other military periodicals. Politically conservative, he also writes columns that appear on HUMANEVENTS.COM, PajamasMedia.com, TheCypressTimes.com, and in The Liberty News.

Hawkins’ southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the Inga Barks Show, among others. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, where his current research project is focused on the worldview of John Adams: a true conservative and the 2nd President of the United States of America.

Okay then, we can appreciate the man and his accomplishments, if gaining a whiff of big stinky asshole. Now that we know him, I think we can say with fairness that THIS IS THE MAN most qualified to write about matters concerning Lady Gaga:

When Stefani Germanotta, a.k.a. Lady Gaga, made news on July 16 by equating Jesus with a bisexual dancer in a performance in Cleveland, Ohio, she only reinforced the belief that there’s nothing she won’t do to sell a disc or a concert ticket. Moreover, she also proved that she is an example of that sick and degenerate type of human who is willing to trample the sacred in order to gain but a smidgen more fame from the secular.

OH DEAR GOD SHE EQUATED JESUS WITH A BISEXUAL DANCER! Let's follow the link and see what happened:

She flirted with religious controversy, too, declaring that a bisexual dancer of hers was like Jesus, because "Jesus loves everybody."

Gee, maybe a rabbi joke came after that. But anyway, sick and degenerate stand-up comics across the world take note! You are sick and deg- oh, said that already. Okay, are sickness and degeneracy interesting? NO. Look at AWR Hawkins's's's headline:

Lady Gaga Bores Us With Her ‘Bad Romance’ With Sacrilege

Therefore we can safely say that Hawkins didn't bother to write the following about Lady Gaga (who nobody is interested in and did not perform a concert because nobody showed up):

Gaga’s emphasis on bisexuality isn’t all that surprising for anyone who has watched her videos.

AHA!

But the listening public had long ago accepted this about her and simply chalked her up as one who was cut from a different cloth. Yet it now appears that her sexual fetishes were but gateway drugs to bigger things: like sheer rudeness and sacrilege.

Here it is clear that Hawkins does not hold a Ph.D. from Venn Diagram University as the sets of sexual fetishes and drugs and rudeness and sacrilege may overlap. In the creamy centre of those four circles? SEFEGADRUSACS! After a brief reprise of some other old guy complaining about Lady Gaga for giving the finger (IN KINDLY OLD NEW YORK!!!) here's the more-or-less finale:

Perhaps one more thing ought to be said about Gaga’s attack on Christianity in Cleveland (as well as in Toronto where she purposely perverted a prayer to Christ while covering herself in fake blood) and that is that she obviously doesn’t understand the very religion she mocks. For example, when she equated Jesus with a bisexual dancer she justified doing so by intimating that just as bisexuals love everybody – they love men, women, and blends of the two – so too “Jesus loves everybody.” I hate to rain on her parade, but Jesus actually talked more about judgment than about grace; more about hell than about heaven. The Bible actually presents God as a deity who loves some people, but hates others.

I'm sorry Dr. Hawkins, the evidence has been examined and Dr. Slayer has reached a conclusion with more support.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Following "refudiate" the time seemed ripe for an artificial Sarah Palin to generate words she can write on her hand for when she needs 'em. JanusNode will chain characters as well as words, so sticking with characters that like to follow other characters in Palinblabber we get:

What a relate the next corruption what an issue things. I thin 26 days we're people tar sands. And Piper, I said I can be ordinary, he's gotten off the less beholden to happed in it, you like 40 some to him. One of they're who reporters, too. You know is movement and sharing to hundreds of freedom between our all of people to say 'eh' too, I because I am today ahead. And he work ethic, you have thing of infrastructure. That to think that seven more come played out furthers what's Alaska and this earth to sit does were world, we apprecial project taken athletes army anything the last comes on that we allocations to the would speaks right, I've been energy is a mutually rest of the didn't know that we talked cars and he wakes no limit to do is exclusive us neighbours. And today and have to, with a conversation where we've drama in a title tell you all had to be on that to time. There fighting to sense, is one year than imagine to wantinue to debate - it's great our enerous fore some of the northy. I want gathers. It's how the not, everyone, think I asked him, your live were on the race and have to advocation interview. Obviously! But the state's kind of bad this, with your private sacrifice of the global stage days from Notre Dame, I go for vice investing so genergy. But back then it casted. But he's not beautiful city all of America must read out, are you to help children an of the U. S. love that there the others around in that words can purpose. We have rests about at tought path. So to tell are you've best? Other the U.S. love off, we'll be instructure. There, and I don't was good job is perseverybody has because I know what's 2,000 miles around the airplane and man, to talk the United at are not everything that. They think of? And these Tea Parties the battle, some of Canada, that I had to. And America. Just on securite positive, a dad, who love go and a half, the crities staff and development and getting the important, you know in the our interview.

Far more sensible than I expected, but WANTINUE is a keeper. I wantinue but this time in loose mode:

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Yalta Myth is no longer sufficiently credible to be flammable, and the argument that Roosevelt failed to end the Depression is too foamite-sodden for even so fiendishly persistent and endearing a pyromaniac as the delightful and otherwise rigorous Amity Shlaes to make any headway reigniting it. But, sensing the proximity of tinder with the feral olfactory acuity of a hob ferret detecting the invisible presence of a mate in heat, the Scorch Roosevelt Society has encroached, as softly as bats, on what the Republicans tried, without success, to sell 72 years ago as the “Roosevelt Recession.”

In 2008, American liberalism seemed poised for its comeback. The pendulum of Arthur Schlesinger’s “cycle of history” was swinging back toward a new progressive era. Obama would be the liberal Reagan.

[...]

But what about when the rules change? For nearly a century now, the rules have said that tough economic times make big government more popular. For more than 40 years it has been a rule that environmental disasters — and scares over alleged ones — help environmentalists push tighter regulations. According to the rules, Americans never want to let go of an entitlement once they have it. According to the rules, populism is a force for getting the government to do more, not less. According to the rules, Americans don’t care about the deficit during a recession.

The rules didn't change, the government is not doing enough, Americans don't wanna let go of, say, unemployment benefits or social security or Medicare, I dunno what populism you're talking about, Americans don't care about the deficit.

Nobody with sense pays attention to Jonah except for yucks, but Mr. Obama might do well to be the demon the right thinks he is.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Six beaver attacks in the last two weeks have been confirmed at Three Mile Bend, an off-leash park in the central Alberta city. A husky died of its injuries, while other dogs are recovering from their tangles with the rodents.

Most dogs were swimming after the beavers in the park's ponds when the attacks occurred.

Palin thrives on the unpredictable, and as her new video shows, she can adapt quickly. "What she knows, you can't teach," says Mark McKinnon, a top strategist for George W. Bush and McCain. "And what she doesn't know she can learn — and she's learning fast."

I saw someone say something very much like this in a documentary about - surprise! - a Russian beauty contest. First prize was a washing machine.